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Leo H. Hutchinson Murder: Ethel Hutchinson travels 1,000 miles to Cañon City to clear her murdered father's name

By Sara Knuth

The Daily Record

Posted:
05/25/2017 09:43:53 PM MDT

Stella Hutchinson, center, and Patsy Hutchinson, left, look at Ethel Hutchinson in 1948 in court before Stella's murder trial. "They're looking at me wondering if I'm going to hang in there to help get her acquittal," Ethel Hutchinson said May 17, 2017. (Royal Gorge Regional Museum & History Center / Courtesy Photo)

Ethel Hutchinson Hardy poses for a photo May 17 at the Royal Gorge Regional Museum & History Center. (Michael Alcala / Daily Record)

When the neighbors told Ethel Hutchinson that her father was dead, they didn't tell her that he had been shot and killed by her mother.

Instead, she and her husband traveled 200 miles from their home in Baca County to Cañon City to find a crime scene and a family scattered across town. Her mother, Stella Hutchinson, was in jail. Her younger sister, Patsy Hutchinson, had been taken in by a minister and was prepared to stay with friends. And her father, Leo Hutchinson, was dead, with three gunshot wounds in his chest and one in his abdomen.

In the days that followed his April 10, 1948, murder, Stella Hutchinson, 45 at the time, began telling of years spent with a man who "has beaten and abused me repeatedly," she told the Daily Record on April 12, 1948.

Ethel Hutchinson, who was 18, began meeting with her mother's attorney, John Stump Witcher, who told her that if her mother was convicted, Patsy, 15, could end up as a ward of the court.

When her mother's murder trial rolled around in September, Ethel Hutchinson testified about the years of abuse her father inflicted on her family.

"He would fly off the handle over everything," she said April 12, 1948, according to the Daily Record's coverage. "I'm going to stick by my mother."

But 69 years later, Ethel Hutchinson, 87, told the Daily Record that her testimony was false. She traveled from her current home in California to Cañon City on May 17 to clear her father's name.

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"He died in print as a beast," she said. "And I don't want that to continue."

Ethel Hutchinson, who has spent the last year compiling letters and documents from the time surrounding the trial, said she felt pressured into testifying on her mother's behalf.

"I made my decision based on what Witcher said. He said, 'Your mother is facing a very serious murder charge,"' she said. "I didn't even read the papers. I was still in shock, basically. And he said, 'And your sister is a minor, and she could become a ward of the court.' I knew I couldn't take care of her. We could hardly take care of ourselves at that point. So, that was basically why I made that decision."

Stella Hutchinson is carried out of the courtroom on a stretcher after fainting in September 1948 during her murder trial. (Royal Gorge Regional Museum & History Center / Courtesy Photo)

The murder trial

During Stella Hutchinson's September 1948 murder trial, spectators came from miles away.

The crowd was captivated. During testimony, the Daily Record reported on Sept. 22, 1948, that people listened intently even to complex medical testimony about the three bullets that were launched in Leo Hutchinson's chest and the bullet that went through his abdomen.

But most of the attention was placed on Stella Hutchinson.

"Mrs. Hutchinson only showed occasional interest in the proceedings," the Daily Record reported during the trial Sept. 22, 1948. "Occasionally, she listened with interest as the witness described the autopsy."

In testimony later that morning, she "put her head down on the table and sobbed quietly for several moments," the story said, after pieces of Leo Hutchinson's bloody clothing were admitted as evidence.

Later that day, court proceedings were stalled after Stella Hutchinson fainted in Witcher's office.

As she testified later during the trial, she told of incidents ranging from being forced to do farm work after getting knocked out by a hit to a punch that caused her to miscarry a baby.

But during the trial, Ethel Hutchinson didn't know about any of this — District Judge Joseph D. Blunt granted a defense motion to bar witnesses from being in the courtroom during testimony.

Bound copies of the Cañon City Daily Record's coverage of the 1948 murder of Leo Hutchinson are displayed at the Royal Gorge Regional Museum & History Center. The top story, 'Certainly I Killed Him ... I Don't Have Any Regrets,' is a column by Stella Hutchinson as told to reporter W.T. Little. (Michael Alcala / Daily Record)

"She told a lot of lies on the stand," Ethel Hutchinson said May 17. "I didn't hear what she was saying. I don't think that I could have ever just sat still and listened to her, even though I agreed to help her."

When it was time for Ethel Hutchinson's testimony, she began telling of "her being beaten with a board and of another beating 'because I could not park a truck exactly where he wanted it to be,'" the Daily Record reported.

When it came to her marriages — she had been married twice by the time she was 18 and had a son — "she said she got married 'because I thought that would solve my troubles.'"

The testimony, among others, seemed to help.

On Sept. 28, 1948, Stella Hutchinson was acquitted of murder.

The next day, she learned she would receive half of Leo Hutchinson's $48,000 estate.

By December, Stella Hutchinson was remarried to a commercial photographer, O.B. Daniels, who was in Cañon City during the trial to take photos.

One year after the acquittal, Stella Hutchinson, who later became Stella Daniels, was charged with simple assault and intent to commit murder after using the same .38 Smith & Wesson revolver to shoot in the general direction of her new husband. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Years of Abuse

Though she wanted to set the record straight about her father, Ethel Hutchinson said she didn't live a life free from abuse.

"I was a victim, my dad was a victim, we all were victims," she said.

But her mother was the real abuser, she said.

"Once Patsy was born, I was the step kid then," she said. "It changed totally."

Throughout the years, Ethel Hutchinson said she watched as her mother grew distant from her and close to her sister. In one instance, Stella Hutchinson had beaten Ethel's dog to death, she said, but she left the family dog alone.

Before her father was murdered, Ethel Hutchinson said her mother tried to build a case against him throughout the town.

"She'd tell people in town that 'he did this to me' or that I was this," she said. "She tried to build a case that was not true against him. So, she really was prepared to murder him when she did because she had already built these building blocks of how bad a guy he was."

Ethel Hutchinson said she also tried to pit her against her father.

"She would tell me that Dad thought I was worthless. That was from, you know, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 up to 9," she said. "And then she would tell him that I didn't like him."

But instead of giving in, Ethel Hutchinson said, she formed an alliance with her dad.

"I was nine. And she wasn't around, and Dad did some nice fatherly things, and from that day on, we seemed to have an understanding that this is Stella. We had to deal with her," she said. "But we didn't pay any attention to her. So, when she would say these things to us, insulting, we really just kind of ignored it."

After the trial was over, Ethel Hutchinson said she still was on the receiving end of abuse from her mother and sister. Though she eventually remarried and moved from a home in Pueblo to California, her mother stayed in touch with her son, Dennis, through letters and phone calls.

"They continued on with their same insults," she said. "It was a continuity of how they treated Dad."

The letters Ethel Hutchinson has put together during the past year show written correspondence between her mother, sister and herself in the immediate years after the trial.

In some letters, they ask for money. In others, her mother wrote phrases such as "you are dead to me" and that she hoped that Ethel Hutchinson would one day become an old, lonely woman.

A Happy Life ... And a Warning to Others

In the 69 years since the trial, Ethel Hutchinson has traveled across the country, worked, had another child and was married to a man she loved for "58 years and five months — I always add that five months," she said.

Though her mother followed her son throughout the years, she said she lost contact with her and only learned of her death at 90 years old after coming across her obituary. She said she doesn't know whether or not Patsy Hutchinson is still alive.

"No matter what happens, you always look at the positive. And I do. I might not have met my husband," she said.

On Dec. 23, 1950, Ethel Hutchinson married Andy Hardy in a ceremony at his parents' home in Pueblo. They had met just more than one year earlier through his brother at the cafe where she worked.

"Andy was a terrific guy," she said. "He was a top-notch guy."

After they moved to California with Dennis, they had another son, Randolph Lee.

Today, Ethel Hutchinson said she also wants to use her story as a way to warn other families about potential abuse.

She wants people, "if they read this story, to actually consider what's going on in their own families," she said. "Maybe they'll be able to recognize that there's a potential tragedy coming on if they continue on like I did, you know, like we did in the family."

When she started doing more research last year at the Royal Gorge Regional Museum & History Center, Ethel Hutchinson met Natalie Bard, who retired from the museum early this year. Since then, the two have formed a close bond, taking trips and spending last Christmas together.

"We've been in contact with letters," Ethel Hutchinson said. "Natalie has just been a good friend. I loved what she said in a letter. She said, 'We are connected.'"

Though she still has a few living relatives, many of those close to her have died. Her husband and son Dennis both died in 2009. Her other son, Randolph Lee, died in 2015.

She said in May that she plans to leave her living trust to the museum, where she met Bard. Shortly after she told her story to the Daily Record, she turned in the paperwork.

But as she lives out the rest of her life, Ethel Hutchinson Hardy, who remains healthy and able to drive 1,017 miles to Cañon City from Hemet, Calif., said she felt that she needed to tell her story.

"I don't know why I'm still here, but I am," she said. "And it must be for this purpose."

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